


When It Bleeds

by Lipstickcat



Category: Psych
Genre: Angst, Dark, Insanity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-03-28
Packaged: 2017-12-06 18:44:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/738900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lipstickcat/pseuds/Lipstickcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Extracts from a descent into insanity. </p><p>Carlton looks after Shawn after he looses his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When It Bleeds

Some days were better than others.

Some days, Shawn was still as sharp as a thumbtack; as smart and quick and witty as he had ever been. Those days were godsends, when Carlton would willingly shoulder the teasing and verbal poking. He’d smile and pretend that everything was normal, and he didn’t know what tomorrow would bring as a trade-off for that day. 

Some days, Carlton was forced to suspend all disbelief and be prepared to hold conversations about fish in toasters and trees that grew inside out, knowing that there would be no punch line, no moment when the “vision” suddenly became clear. 

Though, once, there had actually been fish in the toaster. Well, the salmon steaks that Carlton had intended to cook them both for dinner that evening. Perhaps Shawn had decided to try to cook them himself, or perhaps he’d just thought that the pink medallions of meat belonged in the slots of the silver toaster. Who knew? If Shawn didn’t know his own mind, what hope did anyone else have?

And then there were the days when it was all going on behind Shawn’s eyes, not a single piece of information or thought getting released to the world at large. Days of silence and endless staring out the window. Days when Carlton would have to spoon feed Shawn, just to be sure that he ate something. 

Carlton would take a hundred conversations about how to count the rings of a tree when it grows inside out, to just not have to have another day of silence. 

***

If Carlton were a gambling man, he’d have placed a sure bet on it being Guster who had difficulty adjusting to the types of scenes working with homicide invariably presented. Anyone who saw Gus’ reaction to his first dead body would have placed the same bet. 

Admittedly, back then he didn’t know what he knew now about Shawn. If he had known, he may have held a hand up and said “hang on a second. Is it a good idea to let him see all this stuff?” Not that anyone would have listened, because they never did take his reservations about letting a pair of goofy PIs with a gimmick traipse around his crime scenes seriously anyway. But he’d have tried. 

***

“I see!” Spencer’s body went rigid as he flung one arm out in the air, the other instantly touching to his temple. “I see… Cherries! No! Little…” He rubbed at the air between his fingers, searching for the words. “…..little pink petals?”

“Cherry blossom!” O’Hara cried out as if she thought she was a contestant on some two-bit gameshow. 

Lassiter rolled his eyes.

“Yes! Cherry blossom trees…. And the house… it’s too small for people to live in.” Stumbling forwards in a zigzag, he tripped and fell into the arms that Lassiter reflexively raised to catch him. “It’s….. it’s….” Spencer reached behind the detective, taking no amount of shame in very obviously groping him. “You have something missing…” 

Lassiter could see the barely contained smirk and was only a second away from throwing the fool to the ground, when Shawn’s hands slid right up his back, over his shoulders and neck, to poke over the top of his head. He couldn’t see what the so-called psychic was doing, but he could feel that he was wriggling his palms around in some way. 

“And your ears are all wrong… They should be more….” 

His voice trailed off. In the back ground, O’Hara was getting excited over a dog kennel, but Spencer’s smile had slipped. As had his hands, so that they were now resting on Carlton’s shoulders. 

“…. It hurts when it bleeds.” Shawn’s voice was quiet and deep, almost introspective. None of the theatrics for the rest of the room, no-one seemed to hear. Except Carlton.

Then Spencer took a deep breath, grin jumping back on his face as he spun away. “Yes! And in the mailbox! _New Scientist Magazine_ ….”

It was easy to find the house after Spencer’s “vision” virtually dumped them on the doorstep. The evidence was exactly where the psychic verbally pointed it to be. 

He never found out _what_ was bleeding though, and it played on Carlton’s mind because it just didn’t fit. 

***

Some days, he got so angry with Shawn. It was normally at the end of another day he’d wasted in hospital, rather than actually doing his job, because Shawn had decided to ram a spoon-not even a fork, a _spoon_ for Christsake!-into the dvd player, or because he’d made a cocktail of pineapple juice and kitchen bleach and chugged it while Carlton was on his morning run. 

… Carlton used up a lot of personal days, these days. 

At the end of those anxious days; staring at bland, bumpy walls, sitting on waiting room chairs with all the padding picked out, twisting his hands together until they hurt, just waiting to hear that Shawn would be okay, as okay as he ever would be again… At the end of those days, he’d go home too bone tired to even make it to the bedroom. 

He’d sit up and stare at less bland walls. He’d stare at the photos on the mantelpiece and the newspaper clippings on the wall and remind himself - That one; that was _before_. And that one; that was one of his good days, we had a picnic on the beach and he made me roll up my slacks to jump waves with him. 

And then he’d get angry, because Shawn did this to himself! Shawn knew that he would never forget the things he saw and then proceeded to fill his mind with the darkest, most heinous things human beings could do to each other. Sometimes, he blamed Henry, just for a little variety, but most of the time he directed his anger at Shawn for his self destructive behaviour; surely he knew what it was doing to him? He’d ruined his own life and torn apart everybody who ever loved him. 

In blind red anger Carlton would wish to get the call, the one that said that he wasn’t doing a good enough job of looking after the man he loved and that Shawn would have to be taken to an institution. 

Then he’d hate himself for thinking it. 

Then he’d wish he hadn’t given up drinking.

Madeline said it was a normal chain of emotions. Carlton wondered if she told herself the same thing on the nights when the fact that her son had lost his beautiful mind became too real and overwhelming. 

***


End file.
